


analog

by bioluminesce



Series: Control Short Fics [1]
Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25428919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioluminesce/pseuds/bioluminesce
Summary: As conflict between the Board and the Former escalates, Jesse picks up a phone.Or, what if the Former was the quest giver for AWE?
Series: Control Short Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978102
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	analog

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from hereswhatsarasaid via Tumblr: The Hotline

Years ago, Jesse Faden owned a CB radio and a Honda with the odometer dead at 150,000 miles. She learned some trucker shorthand, but it was citizens’ band; she wouldn’t have heard anything about her brother there anyway. She lost the radio and the Honda when she sold the car for room and board and psychiatric monitoring. Something romantic lingered around the idea of that radio, glimpses of good times in the search, purple sunsets and white-topped mountains and clues that didn’t dead end.

The Hotline scorches into memory instead of fogging gently up like the long drives with the radio. Jesse Faden _directs_ , and that means placing someone at the monitoring station outside the Hotline’s hanging chamber ( _don’t get any closer_ ) and hoping they’ll reach her if something calls from the other side. That means _picking up_ , walking that catwalk through the Oldest House like one foot after another on the staccato lines in the middle of a highway.

The phone rings, loud and insistent, over and over.

The bakelite is slightly scratchy under her fingers. It’s been a relatively quiet day in the FBC, the Nail restored, the Hiss numbers staying steady. Jesse’s feeling loose and competent. There’s a little frisson as she picks up.

She isn’t expecting the voice to sound as _live_ as it does. The Board always has a sense of being prerecorded and distant, a channel too far from the station. Mountains get in the way. This sounds like a cell signal at its best, urgent and clear. But she can’t _really_ understand that voice, like she doesn’t really hear the Board’s in words. How is anything so smeared and so clarified at the same time?

< Outside @#$! New @%@! Half-Price >

She’s almost happy to hear from the Former, but nevertheless Jesse considers for a moment whether to hang up. She feels like she’s been caught. Like the Board is a parent that doesn’t want her to go over to her friend’s house.

Screw that.

“What?”

< Writer @^#! Outside @#$! Substance @#$! Aspen >

Jesse raises an eyebrow. But what did she expect? Nowhere in there is an instruction or a warning. Surely the Former didn’t want to simply chat. The Hotline isn’t supposed to connect to anything but the Board. Has the fight over the Astral Plane escalated?

“Are you still planning to deliver a panini?” Jesse asks. The flippancy worked before.

This time, it doesn’t help. The phone grows hot in her hands. It happens gradually, so that by the time she really notices it feels like her fingerprints are about to sear off. She juggles it, trying to pass the heat from the pad of one finger to another.

“Hey!”

< Interference @#$! Board? @&!# Keys $%^@ Soon>

There’s a ringing in her ears like the swoop of paranatural force. Inspired or predestined, she levitates the handset. Her own power stirs her hair and screams loud in her ears. It’s especially noticeable because she isn’t used to such fine control. It’s hard _not_ to throw the handset across the room, but she doesn’t, just holds it in a tornado of power inches above her hand. What if this power popped, sent the handset and the cradle crashing into the walls? Could the Hotline break?

The Board doesn’t speak. Even if it’s causing the heat and the interference, it does’t feel intentional— just a feature of the landscape, like the Rockies. Or maybe that’s the Board’s defense mechanism. Its paranatural alibi.

“Not letting me talk to someone _isn’t_ a good look,” Jesse clenches her jaw. “You can speak to me, but the phone is just a conduit. It’s keyed to me, isn’t it? I choose the channel.”

She does. A silence falls, then her ears ring so loud she wonders, for the first time, whether the Ranger at the end of the catwalk can hear it. She lets the phone drop into her hand, and finds it to be cool.

<Bronze $%^@ Later >

The voice from inside the air or inside the phone sounds faint and nonsensical, but she’s relieved the Former isn’t totally gone.

She shoves the phone into the cradle, not interested in listening to the heavy silence that might or might not be the Board.

Having a plan gives her energy enough that she wants to jog through the House, but she takes a moment to study the Hotline’s shell first. The silence in this room makes the signals _so_ big. The room is the opposite of the wide country she traveled through to get here, isolated away from squeaking CBs and radio preachers and morning disk jockeys. The emptiness contained crowds. What titanic battles could run along the wires?

She reminds herself that the directorship means she can mobilize anyone in this building left alive, except for her brother. Think of ways to use that power. First: check with the astralnauts. If anyone knew what was happening at the point of the black pyramid while she was using the Hotline, they would. She may not have a car any more, but she isn’t a child caught out by a parent. This House is hers, and she’s going to find out what all of its denizens have to say.


End file.
